regrets and goodbyes

My grandmother returned to the US today. Hours before her departure, everything operated as usual. Although we weren’t sure when we’d see each other again, there was no trace of drama that could possibly happen. My grandmother was her usual easily-irritable self, and my mom was her usual (it’s quite hard to sum her up) self as well. When it was time for her to leave, we all went out with her to the garden and took the obligatory pictures as my dad joked around to ease the tension. Soon enough, there was no escaping the fact of parting, and my mom and I had to hug her farewell. My grandmother quickly retorted “oh tama na, ayoko umiyak” while my mom fought back her tears. As the three of us struggled to contain ourselves in that awkward moment of physical disjoint, I realized another undeniable trait we all shared – we definitely sucked at good-byes. Even with all the unavoidable nuisances that prolonged visits with my grandmother brings, we will all definitely miss her. Her presence has such a profound effect on my mom that after months of being confined at home, she can suddenly spend entire days at the mall doing what they both love: eating, shopping and talking. :)) This coming from my mom who could barely walk right before my grandmother and aunt came home.

As the country mourns the passing of another remarkable and honorable person in Sec. Jesse Robredo, some people ask why regrets are always made in the end. And a wise handful realize that the point to be taken is not that we should regret his passing, but that we were lucky to have known and had someone like him at all. It is quite hard to follow the age-old adage that we should “live life without regrets”, for regrets are connected to past actions that we then realize to be something we wished we didn’t do. We rethink and hold on to them and hope for the impossible that we be given a second chance to undo what has been done. Some people are misled into thinking that they were granted a second chance, but the fact is, there is no second chance. Within the confines of the continuum of time, a second chance is non-existent. Such dearth creates a strong market for the invention of time machines. Instead, what we have is the chance to learn from the mistake and not necessarily correct it but make up for it. And we always have that chance. The only way we can accept what is done and truly leave the regret is by acting out what we have learned from it. Individual moments like that is what the world needs to keep moving forward. Whenever a sincere apology is made, whenever what should be said has finally been said, whenever what could have been is being, a small light bulb turns up in the vast expanse of the universe, signifying that the Earth has become a bit of a better place right in that moment. This is the moment we should live for. This is the moment that we realize that although “to err is human”, it is exactly in this erring and reinventing ourselves that the nobility of mortality lies.